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Track: Natural Resources and Conservation
Ursula Watkins
Environmental Research Institute of Michigan
1975 Green Road
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
Telephone: 313-994-1200 x2472
Fax: 313-994-5824
E-mail: uwatkins@erim.org
Landscape Interface and Corridor Assessment with a GIS Land Planning Tool
The mutual boundary of two land use types, such as urban/rural, woodland/agricultural, or wildland/urban, exists as an interface in the landscape. These interfaces can promote mobility and security for some species; they can also provoke conflict between unsympathetic landscape neighbors. Similarly, corridors in the landscape are commonly thought to benefit ecosystems by providing avenues for species introduction and travel; it is also possible, however, for landscape corridors to serve as transportation routes for invasive species, or as false starts, in cases where there is no suitable habitat at the other end. The ability to identify and quantify both interfaces and corridors within a landscape has been incorporated into a GIS land planning tool; this tool facilitates regional planning efforts with analysis options such as viewshed evaluation, change detection, and soil erosion estimation. The interface and corridor assessment functionality allows for land use change analyses that include
differentiations in amounts and types of interfaces and corridors over time. In addition, the connectivity of a landscape, an increasingly cited indicator of ecosystem health, can be assessed through an analysis of the spatial distributions of the interfaces and corridors in a landscape. The land planning tool and examples are presented.
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